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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24258373">Anywhere Better to Go</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthz/pseuds/Hyacinthz'>Hyacinthz</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Penumbra Podcast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Other, POV Second Person, Season 3, brief mention of alcohol use, pete gets stabbed a little but it's not graphic, takes place after Man in Glass but before Shadows on the Ship, this is..... soft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:22:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>994</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24258373</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyacinthz/pseuds/Hyacinthz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Trouble arises. You keep expecting him to disappear.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>56</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Anywhere Better to Go</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first morning you spend with him is a surprise. You wake promptly at the same time as always, habitual as breath and without regard for time zone, for light cycle, for circadian rhythm. You’re curled around him like a vine, you’re unseasonably warm everywhere your bodies touch. You don’t remember choosing to hold him. It burns you a little: it’s a lot like being cheated, and you’re so well-accustomed to being the cheat.</p><p>You spoke the whole, long night, just as you have most every night since Zolotovna’s party. Rather than parting ways in the early hours, you must have fallen asleep mid-sentence—his or yours. Maybe you simply dropped into slumber in the exact same breath. Certainly, you don’t recall, but you’ve lost your glasses. Once you locate them, you see his patch is twisted and halfway up his forehead.</p><p>You’ve waited a long time to watch him blink his eye awake. Anticipation twists so cruelly in your gut that you take the coward’s way: you brush fingers against his temples, you work the straps of his patch until they sit flat where they’re meant to. You press fingerprints against the narrow divots writ on his skin from the patch and the pillow and the gravity of lying in bed beside you.</p><p>He wakes in the process, naturally. You’re spared the suspense. He jerks a little between your hands at your first touch. He makes a soft sound while his eye is still closed. It’s as you smooth those creases in his skin that his hands steal up to yours, hold them tight. He looks at you.</p><p>“Hi,” he says. And if you don’t remember choosing to hold him, certainly he never chose to be held. You lie there, fingers framing his cheeks. He strokes a thumb up and down the center of your palm. One of his calves sits slotted between yours. “Hi.”</p><p>Whatever you’ve hidden inside of you all this time—that thing you filed so carefully away. There’ll be no putting it back now.</p><p>But you’ve known that for some time.</p><p>“Hello,” you say. And you’d like to do a number of things after that, all of them varied in terms of wisdom, in terms of long-term viability, in terms of prioritizing the integrity of this, your brand-new crime family. Foremost among these you would, of course, like to kiss him. You would like to proceed down the list from there, double, triple checking certain items where prudent. Or where imprudent. Really, you want it all.</p><p>You do not kiss him, not yet. You do some of those things that live further down the list and typically come after more frenzied activity: you touch his hair, you pull him close. You whisper <em>good morning.</em></p>
<hr/><p>The first time you’re stabbed with the <em>Carte Blanche</em> crew, competency takes his wheel. You know he’s competent, it was one of those things that so stoked a fire in both Rex Glass and the man who wore him. It is a thing Duke Rose gambled on, a thing both Dauphin and Ransom before him forgot completely. But you sit there, shocked and holding your insides where they belong, and he only secures Vespa’s attention before kneeling down and joining in your effort. He’s silent. He could be hewn from marble, so firm is his grip and so gnarled is his brow and so cold are his fingers.</p><p>That last one may be the shock.</p><p>Vespa arrives and saves your day. He talks, then. He speaks to you, soft, hand in yours until you’re safe in the belly of the ship. His fingers warm by the second.</p><p>You recognize the competence, but here’s a thing you’re not acquainted with: he saw the knife’s trajectory. He moved to take down the wielder. He never came close to making himself the target.</p>
<hr/><p>In truth, you’ve had scores of nights with him. Nearly all imaginary, yes, but just parades of nights. The agent taking tender care of the injured PI and taking even tenderer care of him, after. After they’ve spun their way through a heist in their sharpest, Duke and Dahlia stripping it all off till they’re wearing nothing but smiles, wedding rings, and stolen jewels. Stolen glances across a gleaming ballroom, tension racketing up into a fight, an enthusiastic make-up and, later, a marriage; haven’t you heard? The Dauphins tell it at all their parties. Nothing like a party: a hotel room. Juno’s voice indescribable around your name: <em>Nureyev</em>. All one after the other until they hurt too badly to bear. Those in-between evenings, you sometimes turned to a bottle when it could be afforded. And that was so very out of character that it was almost like he was with you then, too.</p><p>Tonight is not imaginary. Neither of you are in your cups. In fact, you’re in pajamas. You’ve kissed him for the first time, since.</p><p>When he kisses you in return, you get the notion that neither of you intend to stop. This is a certainty in your chest, a curling in his fingers. It is something that could go unspoken.</p><p>You speak it. It sits there, rife with your nerves but firm in clarity. An unambiguous proposition that begins <em>would you? </em>You have so very much to lose if you’re wrong.</p><p>He smiles. It creases him at the corners, it shows teeth. You’ve composed sonnets to his flickering smiles before, but this one isn’t quite like the others. This one stays.</p><p>“I’d like that.” And you have your mouth on his before the sentence is over. You sneak hands beneath his shirt. You don’t quite know what to do with yourself: really, you want it all. You pull away with some small need and you’re rewarded: you catch that smile again. You like it so well that your fingers get greedy, that you turn your own mouth to nearly so lovely a purpose. You get him gasping: “<em>Oh</em>, Nureyev. I really would.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you all know where the title came from, right? &gt;:) Juno's last line, too.</p><p>this is almost completely unedited.....  wrote some fic to distract myself from writing fic :x</p></blockquote></div></div>
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